A Low Calorie Diet – Essential For Weight Loss?

In this article, I’m going to address the question “Is a low calorie diet necessary for weight loss?“… and the answer I’ll give you goes TOTALLY against what everyone else out there has told you! If you’ve ever wondered:

• Do I need to starve myself to lose weight?
• Is it healthy?
• Are there ANY benefits?

Then you’re going to like what you’ve found here today!

What IS a Low Calorie Diet?

A low calorie diet is when you’re consistently eating a little less calories each day than you’re burning or using through your activity levels.

So take the “average” calorie requirements each day per the USDA (even though this is way off for most athletes, people, etc) of 2,000 calories. So if eating 2,000 calories allows you to stay basically the same weight, a low calorie diet (defined by me) would be somewhere from 1,400-1,800 calories each day.

This is low enough that you’ll lose weight while on the diet, but not so low that you’ll suffer ill effects over the long term–and as you can see I’ve provided a “range” of about 400 calories because I’m not very strict like that

What All The “Experts” Say

All the experts say that you should avoid low calorie diets like the plague, that low calorie diets:

• Send your body into starvation mode
• Will slow your metabolism
• Will cause you to lose muscle mass and not fat
• Will cause your willy to go soft in men and your sex appeal to vanish for women…

(Ok I made that last one up) but most “experts are against low calorie diets.

Why They Want You To Eat a Lot

Ever wonder why experts want you to eat a lot, even when the six meals per day idea has been proven to be a myth? Ever wonder why the scare you into thinking your metabolism will slow like molasses, you’ll gain tons of fat, and never be an athlete if you’re not constantly eating food every 2-3 hours?

Think it could have something to do with the fact that:

• Nobody has time to prepare, cook and fix six meals each day
• So you’re forced to buy pre-made “meal replacement” shakes/drinks/bars and food supplements and…
• Most of these guys own or are paid by supplement companies who make these meal replacement “foods”?

I’m no expert, but I think it might have something to do with the fact it might make for good business to keep you “hooked” on using their products long-term and scared into never quitting them.

What You Need To Do If You’re Going To Eat A Lot

Here’s the thing: it’s entirely possible to re-shape your body by eating a LOT of food. You just have to make sure you’re exercising a LOT too. And when you do this–your body will “re-arrange” itself so that it becomes more lean muscle and a lot less fat.

Pretty cool indeed… but the only downside for most people is that you need to have a LOT of activity levels to achieve this with such a high calorie intake. World renowned nutritional expert John Berardi, calls it “G-flux“. What’s the basic idea? From his article:

“devoted between 6-8 hours a week to training. Although different training phases required different training modalities, Fennell usually mixed max effort work, speed strength work, more conventional bodybuilding work, and even interval work. And Fennell ate a TON of food.”

So if you want to spend at least an hour a day in the gym, and a couple days per week even more, (or if you’re an athlete already who NEEDS to spend this much time in the gym/working out) then you could benefit from a higher calorie diet with your high calorie expenditure and your body will “re-arrange” itself all nice and pretty.

However if you want to spend 3 hours per week in the gym (or a little less, 3x 45 minute sessions) then you could get your dream body by taking advantage of low calorie diets (don’t worry, I’ll show you how to do it without starving yourself).

Benefits of Low Calorie (In Moderation)

There are a lot of benefits to low calorie diets, that have been proven by science. They’ve done a ton of studies on lab rats on reduced calorie diets, here’s just a highlight (all from wikipedia page on CR):

• A small-scale study in the US at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis studied the effects following a calorie-restricted diet of 10-25% less calorie intake than the average Western diet. Body mass index (BMI) was significantly lower in the calorie-restricted group when compared with the matched group; 19.6 compared with 25.9. The BMI values for the comparison group are similar to the mean BMI values for middle-aged people in the US.^[2]
• All those on calorie-restricted diets experienced reductions in BMI after starting their diet. Their BMIs decreased from an average of 24 (range of 29.6 to 19.4) to an average of 19.5 (range of 22.8 to 16.5) over the course of their dieting (3-15 years). Nearly all the decrease in BMI occurred in the first year of dieting.
• It was found that the average total cholesterol and LDL (bad) cholesterol levels for calorie-restricted individuals were the equivalent of those found in the lowest 10% of normal people in their age group. It was found that the average HDL (good) cholesterol levels for calorie-restricted individuals were very high—in the 85th to 90th percentile range for normal middle-aged US men. These positive changes in calorie-restricted individuals were found to occur mainly in the first year of dieting. ^[2]
• “The calorie-restricted group also fared much better than the control group in terms of average blood pressure (100/60 vs. 130/80 mm Hg), fasting glucose, fasting insulin (65% reduction), body mass index (19.6 ± 1.9 vs. 25.9 ± 3.2 kg/m²), body fat percentage (8.7% ± 7% vs. 24% ± 8%), C-reactive protein, carotid IMT (40% reduction), and platelet-derived growth factor AB.”^[3]
• It was found that the calorie-restricted group had remarkably low triglyceride levels. In fact, they were as low as the lowest 5% of Americans in their 20s. This is more remarkable when it is noted that the calorie-restricted individuals were actually aged between 35 and 82 years. Both systolic and diastolic blood pressure levels in calorie-restricted group were remarkably low, about 100/60, values normally found in 10-year-old children. Fasting plasma insulin concentration was 65% lower and fasting plasma glucose concentration was also significantly lower in the calorie-restricted group when compared with the comparison group.” The comparison group’s statistics aligned approximately with the US national average on the dimensions considered.^[4] Fasting plasma insulin levels^[5] and fasting plasma glucose levels^[6] are used as tests to predict diabetes. The study was published in the March 2007 issue of the Journal of American Medical Association.^[2]
• A 2009 research paper showed that a calorie restricted diet can improve memory in normal to overweight elderly.
• The diet as well resulted in decreased insulin levels and reduced signs of inflammation.^[7] Scientists believe memory improvement on that experiment was caused by the lower insulin levels, because high insulin levels is usually associated with lower memory and cognitive function.^[8]

So we got improved BMI, better cholesterol, better blood pressure, better fasting glucose levels, better insulin levels, and better memory. Sounds pretty good!

Importance Of Strength Training

This is where I can’t emphasize the importance of strength training enough, if you decide to go on a calorie restricted (low calorie) diet in any form.

Why? Because your body is lazy holmes! It will burn off whatever weight it needs to, in order to make functioning on a low calorie diet more easy. And you know muscle burns more calories than fat, even at rest, so your body will first choose to burn muscle (usually)… UNLESS… you strength train!

When you do resistance training you’re basically telling your body “ok body, you see this muscle stuff here? We need to keep this because I’m going to be using it… that fat stuff though? That has no use — it’s just making it harder to function so why don’t we just burn that junk off and even better, use it for energy?”

It’s been shown in scientific studies ( Effects of Resistance vs. Aerobic Training Combined With an 800 Calorie Liquid Diet on Lean Body Mass and Resting Metabolic Rate) that even on a liquid diet as low in calories as 800 per day, people who strength train will lose fat not muscle. So lift em’ weights baby!

How To Get Low Calorie Benefits Without Starving Yourself…

This is where “the rubber meets the road” so to speak. In my next article, I’ll cover how to get ALL the benefits of low calorie diets… Without… starving yourself (and so you keep the maximum amount of lean muscle and burn off only fat).

Here’s a hint, It has a lot to do with:

1. How You Eat — the frequency and patterns of your meals (and no, it’s not “6 meals per day”!) and
2. What You Eat - almost everyone gets this wrong, but what you eat can determine whether you lose fat or lose muscle too!

So there you go, you now have a basic primer on the low calorie diet and whether it’s essential for weight loss or not. Enjoy!